Donald Trump has released a video on YouTube containing the “big news” he promised would change the presidential election.

It turns out, its not so much big news as a silly challenge. What a shock.

But why quibble over details when those pesky items have never been particularly high on the Trump agenda.

In his latest effort to fill his need for more attention than any human has the right to crave without incurring some serious psychiatric bills, Trump has promised to make a five million dollar donation to any charity of President Obama’s choice if the President, in return, “opens up and gives his college records and applications … and if he gives his passport applications and records.”

I haven’t seen anyone make this connection yet, but I am really curious. Isn’t it obvious that the astronomic advantage Democrats are enjoying on early voting (e.g.) is due to the robust and continuing assault on voting rights across the nation? Admittedly, it does appear that the Obama Campaign has built an extraordinary machine to get people to vote early, mostly unopposed from what I can tell. But you have to figure that scenes like this are happening because of the specific targeting intent of these laws. Why not vote early under those circumstances, rather than leaving it to chance on election day?

Keep in mind that this could matter a great deal in terms of the election. If Democrats hold a huge early voting advantage and there’s a bad storm on Election Day in the Midwest, Romney’s damn near screwed, isn’t he?

So I get onto the Intertubes a few minutes ago and find all sorts of respectable media outlets reporting breathlessly on a big pile of typical Donald Trump feces that is rumored to be forthcoming and involves Obama somehow.

The fact that this kind of toxic rumormongering garbage is not solely confined to filthpeddlers like WorldNetDaily pisses me off to no end.

Sometimes I’m really ashamed to live in this era in our country’s history.

This should be interesting. Nobody seems to think Romney will win or even do all that well, which is probably a decent prediction. Romney’s foreign policy is centered around white-hot attacks on Obama that nobody outside the far-right really believes or cares about, and many of them will be difficult-to-impossible to bring up in a scenario where Obama is standing right next to him, since all of them pertain more to the imaginary Obama of Clint Eastwood’s chair than the real deal. For example, if Romney accuses Obama of launching an apology tour, Obama could simply ask for the dates, places and content that Romney objected to. Since the tour never existed, Romney will have a difficult time coming up with something even remotely compelling, and he’ll be giving Obama a chance to harshly berate Romney as he did on the Libya exchange in the last debate. He’d probably lose yardage from that play is all I’m saying

Based on his public statements, Romney’s understanding of these issues ranges from poor to mediocre, and the more he is forced to answer in detail the more difficult things will become for him. Obama’s goal will be to draw him into exchanges that force him to do this, and the extent of Romney’s loss will be determined by how often Romney can escape from those exchanges without blundering. Romney’s goals will be to survive the evening without inflicting any major wounds on himself, and to distinguish himself from George W. Bush enough that most viewers don’t think his foreign policy would be a disaster waiting to happen.

The only remaining question is whether Romney tries to “moderate” his foreign policy statements, something he conspicuously hasn’t done in his ever-more-unctuous attempt to say anything in order to win the presidency. Sadly, voters tend to make decisions based on their gut instinct and emotional reactions to the candidates instead of any sort of factual rigor, so this has borne some fruit. But foreign policy has been notably absent in these plans, so I wonder if we’ll see any change.

I would like to add my voice to those complaining about the agenda on the foreign policy debate, which is going to be more than half devoted to the Middle East. It’s rare that a large chunk of the electorate is going to pay attention to foreign policy in any way, so why not use the opportunity to discuss important issues and places that don’t make the front page very often? Proving again that the purpose of news organizations is to exploit rather than to convey the news, the format seems engineered to force maximally hawkish stands and to create tense and “newsy” moments, rather than to illuminate the public. Spending fifteen minutes on Iran and “red lines” is incredibly unfortunate, since this issue is exhaustively covered by the media out of any sense of proportion to whatever consequences an Iranian bomb might conceivably have.